24.02 | Feb '24: Nearing lift-off

Another month gone and it went by so quickly... Between my day job, school holidays and being sick for a few days, I still managed to do quite some work on StageRebels as well!

StageRebels.com is a GO!

After some time thinking, I decided that the name StageRebels is here to stay and therefor registered the domain name with Webhosting. No more running it from my little home server on the raspberry (which is so old, it is crashing a lot!). First things to notice is that the website became insanely fast with loading and even the FTP uploads go way smoother compared to what I was used to. Time to decommission the old raspberry :)

Publii & Post ordering

To create this website I use this software called "Publii", which really is becoming a love/hate relationship. Creating the posts is really nice and simple with the build in editors, but when it comes to these little settings like the order in which posts are shown... Well... That is a different story.

I found I can set it pretty easy for the complete website, which is great, but in case of 1 of my categories, I want the ordering to be the opposite... This exception is not something that comes easy.

For now I found a way around it, but it is a bit time consuming, which I don't like. Will check if there is a way to change this in the code maybe, but that is a worry for a bit later.

Day Job & ToastMasters

As you know, I am maintaining StageRebels.com next to my standard day job. Bills need to be paid, bellies need to be filled :)
Most likely you also know that the company I work for organises a yearly event, where many of the people in my team, including myself, will go on stage and present on the work we did. One of the requests I received multiple times already is to help coworkers get over their nerves or provide them with tips & tricks, which I really love doing!

For this reason I opted to start our very own internal "ToastMasters" club, where we can learn from each other by sharing experiences and practice. Late last year I got approval to set this up and last month I got the request to organise the Technical Track for our event and combine this with the ToastMasters initiative. Needless to say I am extremely excited about this!

Since it is my first time doing an initiative like this, I will for sure share my experiences and create the articles needed for others to do the same.

Stay tuned for more on this subject.

Main article is reaching completion! + an eBook

As read already in previous blogs, I am working on creating the "start to finish" articles. Some of it is copied from the old website, other pieces are being written from scratch. Since I create the full article base from start to finish in a single word document, prior to splitting it in separate articles for the website, I decided it would be great to actually publish it as a free eBook as well, maybe even a real book someday. At this moment, I think I am about 75% done and it is really starting to look great already. Once done, I will first get it proof-read by my wife, after which I will publish all of it on the website! As it looks now, I think this should be done somewhere around mid-March :)

Can't wait to bring it out in the world for everyone to learn from and receiving the first feedback on this first version.

Social Media

Since we now have StageRebels.com registered, I figured it is also time to get the Social Media accounts up and running. For now, I will start with Instagram, Facebook and YouTube but don't be surprised that more will follow soon!

Instagram: @rebelsonstage
Facebook: @stagerebelscom
YouTube: @StageRebels

Nostalgia

At one point, I was going over some old recordings of presentations and one of them was my very first presentation ever. This brought up quite some nostalgia and therefor I started typing a blog about "my first presentation". It was fun to type it out and experience all those fears and nerves one more time :).

Conclusion

February was still a lot more about background stuff then originally planned, but there is progress for which I am very happy. On top of that, I am learning a lot of new things which I can use again to enrich the content of StageRebels.com.

Header Image
This image was taken during a weekend trip in February. This is lighthouse "Noorderhoofd" at Westkappele in Zeeland, Netherlands.